It can come across as cliché, but the best professional athletes have a short-term memory. When games are tight and big plays are needed, the best athletes are able to move on from whatever happened before and focus on the task ahead.
That’s certainly true for Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of the Oklahoma City Thunder. Gilgeous-Alexander, as he as all season, came through for the Thunder in the clutch in Game 1 of the Western Conference semifinals on Sunday in a 94-92 win over the New Orleans Pelicans.
Gilgeous-Alexander finished the game with 28 points on 11-of-24 shooting to go with six rebounds and four assists. Although his final line looked sturdy enough, it wasn’t always a clean, easy game for “SGA.”
The 25-year-old MVP candidate missed all three of his three-point attempts, and for the first 10 minutes-and-change of the fourth quarter, he was just 2-of-7 as the two teams jockeyed for the lead.
However, as things got tight late, Gilgeous-Alexander came through. He sank a 20-foot jumper with 1:36 remaining to tie the game at 90. A minute later, with game tied at 90, Gilgeous-Alexander drove the middle, with the Pelicans’ CJ McCollum draped all over him. Gilgeous-Alexander absorbed the contact in the paint and threw up a floater that dropped in for the and-1 opportunity with 32.1 seconds remaining.
Gilgeous-Alexander converted the and-one to put the Thunder up three. Though McCollum responded on the other end with his own jumper, the three-point play made the difference in the game, as the Thunder held on for the win.
After the game, Gilgeous-Alexander told reporters that — like anyone else — he gets upset when he makes mistakes or misses shots. However, he said he forces himself to move on, knowing that lingering the past could cost his team the game.
“I’m upset — when I make a mistake, miss a shot — probably for about 10, 15 seconds. Then it’s the next possession. If you want to win, you have to do so. You have to move on. There’s so many possessions late in the game, when it slows down, that if you let the previous possession distract you, you’ll let the game slip.”
Big shots are nothing new for Gilgeous-Alexander, who was named one of the three finalists for Clutch Player of the Year, an award the NBA introduced last season. Indeed, according to the NBA’s “clutch” statistics — defined as the last five minutes of a game, with the score within five points — Gilgeous-Alexander scored 112 points, seventh-most in the NBA this season, in 107 minutes. He shot 58.1 percent in those moments, better than any of the six players who scored more total points than him.
Of course, the regular season is different from a playoff atmosphere, and one of the biggest questions about the young, upstart Thunder was whether they’d be affected by their glaring lack of postseason experience. Sunday’s win wasn’t exactly a resounding “yes,” but Gilgeous-Alexander proved that he could pull the Thunder through in the big moments.
After the game, in an interview with TNT’s Allie LaForce, Gilgeous-Alexander, true to his nature, was already looking ahead.
“Every night there are things you can get better at, and that’s what we’ll go and look at tomorrow.”
